Aspects of the present disclosure relate to generating images from data received using radar, and more particularly to an interactive synthetic aperture radar (SAR) processor and system, method and computer program product for generating images using SAR data and the interactive SAR processor.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems are capable of generating geospatial products or images from radio frequency (RF) energy. Typically, raw SAR data is collected from a radar system and processed into a pixel-valued geospatial product at a remote data center. This product may be a fairly simple representation of a radar cross section, or a more complicated product based on the phase information, such as an interferogram. These geospatial products are generated by running a set of algorithms with pre-defined parameters on the original SAR data. If an analyst would like to see the data processed in an alternative form, the analyst must have the data re-processed to form a new image. This may require a request to a remote data center, where the original data resides (if the data is still available), and transfer the resulting product to the analyst's workstation. Accordingly, current SAR systems do not permit an analyst to make adjustments to the processing parameters and to generate different products or images based on the adjustments to the parameters substantially instantaneously or in real-time.